How We Shape the Future of Hardware | Mytra's Co-Founders Interview

00:00actually the advice I would give to people trying to create their own company really work in the field a little bit like work in the field you think you have an idea for some new service or product work in that field and get insight that's something I got out of my Stanford experience you maybe you have an idea of what's really valuable and useful as a product but the best approach to creating value is first that you get insight into what the problem is my name's Chris qualty I'm the CEO and co-founder of Mitra we're a 2-year-old company based out of South San Francisco a little bit about my

00:37background before starting Mitra I was at Tesla for 7 and A2 years before Tesla I had various positions in renewable energy and Consulting I was electrical engineer undergrad but at Tesla I joined to lead product and hardware for the supercharger team and I launched various products like paid supercharging and my name is Ahmed Bal I am the CTO and co-founder and Mitra Mitra is building robots for warehouse material flow of trying to solve a fundamental problem with theerror flow in in warehousing Logistics and Manufacturing as well so I joined Tesla in 2014 I think

01:19this is after the dual motor b s was launched or was announced you know there's a lot of skepticism are electric vehicles going to be successful is fully battery electric vehicle or plug in hybrid you know Tesla versus Fisker a lot of uncertainty in the market then but you know I joined Tesla to to solve a very clear problem I was working on more traditional wield Automation and of course a lot of the fixed infrastructure projects that we had a tuss it beforehand and then you know this challenge of let's build a humanoid robot was was given to our team because

01:52we had an integrated robotics team but the challenges of a humanoid are are very different than building a wheeled robot on the floor legged Locomotion grasping and manipulation the kinds of of of decisions that this robot has to process a perception systems are are wildly different and so first Tesla had precisely zero expertise of humanoid robotics at the time so I had to go and figure out who the experts were meet with them try to establish a recruiting pipeline try to find the internal experts within Tesla who were willing and able and also had the foundational

02:25skill sets to be able to solve this problem I had to get myself a two month crash course in human orotic so that was really an interesting time but you know I think one of the things that Tesla teaches you to be very resourceful that wasn't the first time I've been asked to solve the problem which I had no really like deep or meaningful background in but you structure the problem you go find the information you need hop on a plane to meet with the experts as you need you do what it takes to to figure it out you know neon laid a mandate out that we needed to get a some robot

02:54walking in three months it's so between internal experts talking with some some folks out outside the company with to to get accomplish that goal I think as a whole though all robots are not created equal all robot challenges are not equal anytime you're talking about Led Locomotion or just Advanced grasping the perception that the type of data and the consistency of data the frequency of the refresh rates like I'm not just looking at a hand like I need to understand like the forces and yeah there's there's literally infinite ways I could grab something the difficulty of of repeating

03:28that and making that some sort of industrial process is many orders of magnitude more difficult than just driving a bot around the floor of a factory and you know if we think about how difficult it has been to do full self-driving cars or autonomous vehicles you know you could argue that that problem is not a solved problem yet because we don't have ubiquitous cars no driving highways and and surface streets yet right you do have companies that are driving like you can walk outside of this building you will see a car unmanned car drive by this this facility probably in 30 minutes but it's not

04:02ubiquitous right hasn't been adopted building a humanoid to operate at full scale in Factory or a home at the comparable productivity of a human is a very very challenging problem to solve I'm confident it will be solved I think the timing is everything right is this a one-year problem is this a 5year is this a 10e is this a 30-year problem unclear so after spending a year there it was it's a fascinating problem where again was able to work with some of the best and brightest at Tesla and and Beyond Tesla was fortunate to be able to to hire some wonderful people to work on

04:35these huge challenges but ultimately I join Tesla to ship you know millions of products to the public to make real impacts and I felt that most of the impact by the humanoid is dependent on solving effectively some research problems with what we're doing at Mitra this is not in the research domain this is a very like we're solving tangible problems with technology that doesn't require moonshot levels of of innovation to have meaningful impact on the economy after Tesla I I tried to just focus a little bit away from manufacturer let me think a little bit you know do something

05:11else derivatives trading and try to learn more about Ai and financial systems but the bug of manufacturing working on Hardware gotten me again and the things I did at Tesla were very applicable to rev and I thought I really wanted to help one more us auto manufacturer get off the brown I was really excited about rivan trying to help them out so I went and you know spent time at rivian helping them scale their manufacturing assistance as well that's the journey after that I was at a beach in Hawaii I still have the video while I'm recording the beach and I was

05:46going like wonderful this is great I'm done I don't want to do anything else I've solved every problem I want to solve as I'm recording the video I get a call from walty and he's asking me about hey do you remember the problems we went into Tesla during manufacturing let's really solve it at the beginning I was like I don't want to do this I don't want to do manufacturing again I want to be stay at the beach but the more we talked about how we would solve the spot go back to the fundamentals let's not just build another automation company let's do something completely different

06:18the more we talked about it the more I got excited because it's it wasn't just another implementation it's a complete rethink and that was very excited so I said okay yes let's start this company let's find the best people that we can find from our Network and pack a this B with the global Venture Capital volume decreasing dramatically startup must find a better way to stay informed of investment sentiment to survive hi I'm Si from you and we know that many of you watching are startup Founders that's why we have something to share with you guys that's going to be helpful for you the

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07:31startup to the next round and thanks to hpot for sponsoring the video so Mitra was founded because am on and I having seen a lot of these different types of challenges at Tesla and rivan wanted to find a problem that we could solve we uniquely positioned knowledgeable to tackle but also was just simply not being solved right you think of the lowest hanging fruit in your tree and again material flow is most of the work across industry just moving things around yet it's clearly unsolved I can go out and buy an industrial automation system to do almost anything I need the problem is is

08:12it cost effective is it simple is it extensible is it flexible and we said if we can design something that's just far simpler iPhone's a great example Tesla there's lots of great examples of History where to follow a new scurve scurve of adoption right a new tech technology it starts off slowly it then you know there's some acceleration then it kind of tapers off but to truly continue like linear adoption and Improvement of Technologies it's comprised of a whole bunch of small s-curves right we needed to create that new s-curve for industrial aeration there needed to be a new paradigm and to

08:48do that again when you look across history It's usually the simpler thing Waits how do we find the absolute simplest way to do this work and what we realized was that that no there is no system that was designed that was physically or kinematically unconstrained meaning I want to move things in 3D how do I move it up down left right from any cell to any cell in full 3d that was just an unsolved problem at any payload weate so we simulated said this is a solvable problem and if we can do this we've created a system that is of immense value to the industry so that's uh

09:25that's why we decided to tackle this problem fundamentally the material movement for warehouses and Manufacturing happens on pallets pallets in my view are the uh red blood cell of the global GDP everything that you see around you has been on a pallet you know the cameras are clothes or pieces of furniture all of that has been on a pal yet the pallet movement technology has been the same for the past 100 years it's a pallet it's generally the same size it moves uh it's made out of wood and it's moved with for CLI operated by humans it's the same thing and so there hasn't been an optimization

10:05on that for quite some time and in our experience when I worked with with wki we saw that the biggest problem hindering the manufacturing process was just trying to move material from one product with Factory to the other and we were thinking well let's improve that how can we build something that is super simple if you were to look at the need the basic need of moving a pallet or looking at 3,000 lb you're trying to move it from one location to the other for you to do that today you have to get a forklift a forklift has to be at least 3,000 lb just to balance out cuz it's a

10:40forklift heiring something in front of it it has to be at least another 3,000 lb so you're moving 3,000 to 9,000 lb the forklift itself and then 3,000 lb that you want to move it just makes no sense we're we're moving 9,000 to move another 3,000 and we thought about it and we said okay this is such a unoptimized system it's nobody's touching it and it's kind of a given people that go into warehousing and Logistics called manufacturing and you see this it's uh they kind of look at it and they go okay this is our lot in life this is how things are while we saw that

11:12was like no something has to improve so we're looking at you know designing a a new primitive something completely new let's rethink the problem our Bots are 7 pounds they can move 3,000 but they're 700 lb so that's it and it doesn't take a larger footprint than the pup itself now when you start from there I can n 3,000 lb forward backward left and right up and down in full 3d with 700 lb robot that is a different math compeat and that's the approach that we're taking with Nitra now if you limit the variability of movement to the three uh Dimensions now I can start to solve

11:53things with software the boss can only do the three movements and they can uh access any part of the warehouse uh within a structure now I can start to do things with software if I want to build a conveyor I don't have to build a physical conveyor I can tell the Bots move in the direction of a conveyor or lift and so it makes your Warehouse completely software addressable which is a completely new approach to doing any of this and it applies to warehousing Logistics manufacturing anything that moves your standard pallet and that's why we wanted to focus on the pallet

12:28because that's 90% of material movement around the war kind of my take on Founder mode is is effectively as companies get larger the gist is do you still kind of maintain your level of awareness and involvement in the details of your company right very large company mode or manager mode it's like I fully rely on my team to do almost everything and I I have this little function maybe I'm just attending dinners and selling customers at a very high level I think you know at a company like Mitra you know even though we're 74 people Aman and I have no choice but to be in founder mode

13:06there's just too much going on there's too many aspects of the system you know every time a customer walks in we have one this afternoon and between the two of us we need to be fully versed in the technical stack we need to be able to answer questions of like why did you make this decision for this actuator or this design what other reliability issues how do you plan to lower the cost like things like that if you can't talk intelligently about that you're not going to drive confidence in these very sophisticated potential buyers of Parkers so for us like there's no choice

13:39but to be found or M but you know as I think about what I love about this job you know I love being in designer riew so I love the product and the engineering aspects and I know I'm onos too and that's that's something that you know as you get older as you get company gets more mature and larger there's natural pressure to say like you need to de from that you need to let your team do that and I think there's there's a balance that can be achieved where Founders are still in the details not making all the decisions but in the details enough to be aware I mean

14:14Tesla's a I don't know if it's a good example it's an example of where you know Elon had you know when he met with Tesla for his one or two days a week it was like 12 meetings in a day and like every hour some different technical team would come in and like walk through here's what's going on here's the challenges what should we do boss right and he would be making calls on like how electronic sourcing and then we'd be making calls on like wind tunnel design optimization they'd be making calls on on a whole bunch of different aspects of the business not suggesting that's what

14:46every company should do and that is not what we're going to be doing but I think it does show you that it's not like one or the other you can exist as a large company in founder mode you can exist in manager mode for us you know we're much more towards fure mode and probably will stay that way for as long as we to really understand the technical details which as far as I'm concerned doesn't end actually the advice I would give to people trying to create their own company really work in the field a little bit right work in the field you think you have an idea for some new

15:25service or product work in that field and get insight that's something I got out of my Stanford experience you maybe you have an idea of what's really valuable and useful as a product but the best approach to creating value is first that you get insight into what the problem is the reason walty and I started working together is we met at the uh the model 3 production ramp and we were customers of the systems that were there manufacturing and Logistics and material flow systems that were on the system that were in production we met there and we experienced Insight we

16:01saw what the problem really is people go hey add more automation add more technology here fine okay but the Insight that we got that the fundamental problem that needed to be solved is moving the material without you experiencing it for firsthand you miss it you think oh I'm going to work on Warehouse robotics you're going to build this nice you know articulated arm it's going to look nice and neat and great are you really really solving it no and the reason you're not solving it is because you lack the insight into what the fundamental problem is for us it was oh the thing that would unlock

16:39manufacturing is to move the material efficiently without stopping in a very reliable Safe Way You Move it in that way figure out a way to do it and it would unlock value for you in manufacturing without that Insight I think you're you would be on a long path so my advice would be get immersed in the problem Firs head and then try to come up with a solution I'll give you another very practical example today everybody in the company today everyone almost no exception has to work in the warehouse using our system interacting with the warehouse operators at our customer site everyone even web

17:20developers uh marketing everybody has to do it and the reason we did that is from my experience when I was at Tesla and building the software that I told you about it the software for the uh the g410 the way I built the software is I went to the line and I started working on the cars I started you know putting volts head and talking Fasteners and the hood on the model 3 and I experienced what the operator was experienc what kind of software was needed what did I need to finish my job pop and then I built that software and that software infected everywhere that gule that is

17:58the Insight that you need to get before you can say oh I'm going to build a new manufacturing software first work as a user of that supposed system or product that you're trying to create get deep Insight so you fundamentally understand what is the thing that you're trying to create what is the value that you're trying to create and then go okay I have enough Insight that I know so much about this I understand it at a basic fundamental level now you can come up with the new value creation after that I think that's the best advice I could give before somebody says I want to go

18:32and build Hardware there are many little tiny startups that have YouTube videos or videos that that have amazing wonderful devices and you go but what is it solving is it practical are you solving a problem it's because they did the shortcut they said I'm going to build something that looks cooler great go build it but you're not really solving the thing you need to go and immerse yourself get insight and that's why we have everybody here at the company work at the warehouse with our customers and so when they come and build a solution they build it as a warehouse operator they go oh I'm a

19:07warehouse operator who happens to know how to build applications how to build robotics you know here's how I would build it for me that's the best way to build products I mean if you look across the tech Spectrum most companies and you know Andre's famous quote heart software will basically eat the world is very true I think you know when you look at the economy you realize that 85% of the economy or GDP is driven by physical Industries physical problems 90% of the value in the tech economy has been created by mostos software there's a huge discrepancy so when we look at the

19:46problems yet to be solved that haven't really been touched by software they all involve some sort of actuation or manipulation of the physical world iot Internet of Things has been around for few decades and that starts to solve some of the problems around Hardware it gives you signal back from the physical environment into some sort of brain or software but ultimately the actuation of that requires people or something else but when you think of Robotics as applied to the physical world that closes the loop like I can build an actuator a thing to move a physical item

20:22up down left right that's hardware and the combination of that actuation Clos in the loop along with the software capabilities that can be applied to it there's a ton of potential there right this is the next Frontier the next several decades you know you look around you and you see look at all the inefficiencies in the world you look at how the trash is picked up you look at how houses and buildings are constructed you look at how telephone cable is laid you look at how physical Goods must be you know manufactured and there's a lot of opportunity for for software applied

20:56to the physical world and that's why all of of us here at mitro we're super passionate about software fly to the physical world and that comes in the form of Robotics and that is a that is a hardware hardware company the second reason why Hardware is is perhaps more exciting today than it might have been a few decades ago you know when you think of Hardware you think of silicon like making silicon ships that was really you know most of the hardware opportunity but companies like Tesla and SpaceX have come along and they said look these are Legacy Industries the script has been WR

21:28for how to build Automotive vehicles and what margins for for decades and Tesla's coming and saying we're going to do it differently everyone told you know Elon and Company they're crazy for doing this there's very low probability for Success there's lots and lots of ways that this go poorly for them but built an architecture that's significantly simpler 10x simpler or more than the existing products right there's bar your parts and shown that you can disrupt some of these industries it's hard Hardware's hard but if done successfully and done correctly there's huge

22:02opportunity to make meaningful advances in building you know electric vehicles is for some people it's much more rewarding than you know optimizing some age on a on a website or or increasing ad spend by 5% or something like that so there's been a bit of a blueprint in a Playbook that says you can disrupt very large Industries through Hardware uh through some of the more modern successes like you know Tesla WD rivan SpaceX andal couple balls like that